Bhagat Singh: Martyr of the Revolutionary Current

Bhagat Singh had a lawyer, an appeal and a real chance to avoid the gallows. He chose the trial itself as his political stage.

He was hanged at 23. This lesson covers his groups, his two famous actions, his jail years and his ideas.

1How did he come to the HSRA?

He grew up in a political family and turned to revolution young.

• Bhagat Singh was born on 28 September 1907 in Banga village, Lyallpur district.
• His family was already active in revolutionary and progressive politics.
• In 1926 he helped found the Naujawan Bharat Sabha in Lahore.
• It was a youth body that spoke of independence and social change.
• In September 1928, revolutionaries met in Delhi and renamed their group the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association.
• The new name showed a turn towards socialist ideas.
• Singh was a founding member of the HSRA, alongside Chandrashekhar Azad.
• Azad was the group’s military leader.
• For the wider revolutionary current, see Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad and Revolutionary Nationalism.

2What happened in 1928 and 1929?

Two actions made him famous: a killing in Lahore and a bombing in Delhi.

• In 1928, the Simon Commission toured India. Many Indians protested because it had no Indian member.
• Lala Lajpat Rai led a protest march in Lahore. Police charged at the crowd with lathis.
• Lajpat Rai died on 17 November 1928, from injuries after the lathi charge.
• The HSRA decided to take revenge.
• On 17 December 1928, Singh and Shivaram Rajguru shot dead the police officer J.P. Saunders in Lahore.
• It was a case of mistaken identity.
• They had meant to kill Superintendent James Scott. Scott had ordered the lathi charge.
• Singh escaped Lahore soon after. Durgawati Devi posed as his wife, and Rajguru travelled as a servant.
• On 8 April 1929, Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw two bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi.
• The bombs were low-intensity. They were thrown where no one would be badly hurt.
• They shouted “Inquilab Zindabad” and threw leaflets.
• Then they let themselves be arrested. They wanted to use the trial as a platform.
• Exam trap: do not say the bombing aimed to kill. It deliberately did not.
• For the root of the revenge, see Lala Lajpat Rai.
• For the protests, see Simon Commission and the Nehru Report, 1927-28.

3What did he do in jail?

He led a long hunger strike for fair treatment.

• In 1929, Singh and other prisoners in Lahore Central Jail began a hunger strike.
• They demanded recognition as political prisoners.
• They asked for equal treatment on food and clothing, and for access to books.
• The strike lasted 116 days.
• A fellow striker, Jatin Das, died during it after 63 days without food.
• His death raised public sympathy for the prisoners sharply.
• Newspapers across India followed the strike closely.
• The strike made the prisoners’ cause a national issue.

4How was he tried and hanged?

A special tribunal tried him, and he was executed in March 1931.

• The case against him was the Lahore Conspiracy Case.
• The government set up a special tribunal under an ordinance of 1930.
• The tribunal tried Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru without the accused present in court.
• It sentenced all three to death on 7 October 1930.
• Their appeal to the Privy Council was dismissed.
• Singh was hanged on 23 March 1931 at Lahore Central Jail.
• Sukhdev Thapar and Rajguru were hanged with him.
• He was 23 years old.
• India marks 23 March as Shaheed Diwas, or Martyrs’ Day.
• The hanging came days before the Karachi session of the Congress in 1931.
• Gandhi faced anger over it at Karachi. Many felt he had not saved the three.

5What did he believe?

Singh was a reader and a thinker as well as a revolutionary.

• In prison he wrote the essay “Why I Am an Atheist”.
• He argued that belief in God grew out of human weakness.
• His writings show strong socialist and Marxist ideas.
• He wanted more than the end of British rule. He wanted a new society.
• He argued that revolution does not mean the cult of the bomb and the pistol.
• By revolution he meant a change in the whole social order.
• He did not accept Gandhi’s non-violence as a method for the freedom struggle.
• He feared that it could swap one set of rulers for another.
• This is one of the sharpest ideological splits in the freedom movement.
• For the Congress’s official line, see Jawaharlal Nehru as a Freedom Fighter.

6Why is he still remembered?

His death at 23 turned him into a lasting symbol.

• His early death made him an icon, especially for the young.
• He appeals to those who prefer a bolder style of nationalism.
• In a 2008 India Today poll, readers voted him the “Greatest Indian”.
• He ranked ahead of Gandhi and Subhas Chandra Bose in that poll.
• That shows how far his popular memory has outgrown his short life.
• Shaheed Diwas on 23 March keeps the memory alive each year.